Synopsis: A flying saucer perches itself on top of a New York
apartment complex roof. The size of a
dinner plate, its occupant has found the perfect narcotic high in the chemicals
found in the human brain at the height of sexual orgasm, the extraction process
for it to claim these chemicals killing the victim instantly. A German
scientist Johann Hoffman (Wernherr),
in the apartment of an older woman Sylvia (Doukas)
who tries to flirt with him, keeps an eye on the saucer with concern. Model Margaret
(Carlisle) is victim to this alien,
perched above her apartment, killing everyone she has sex with to the point she
finally believes she is the one killing people herself. Amongst drug addicts,
her abusive roommate/lover Adriane (Sheppard),
a gay model who continually berates her (also played by Carlisle) and various night clubbers and photographers, she slowly
becomes more and more disillusioned with her life in the city and becomes more
curious about the alien.

After all these years building up
an image of Liquid Sky, you find yourself
as for others that a film can be drastically different from the picture you
built in your mind. The eighties sci-fi movie I painted in my thoughts is
actually a low-fi drama in the scope of Paul
Morrissey's work with Andy Warhol
like Trash (1970), sunk in the
bottom of the gutter but with a lot more hairspray involved. The screenshots
show how the early eighties aesthetics are fully entrenched in the film's
personality, with lots of neon and unconventionally shaped costumes but beneath
this style is a gritty drama involving heroin addiction, date rape and
struggling socialites hiding their angst behind glow-in-the-dark face paint,
cocaine and constant nightclub dancing. Despite a style that predates Lady Gaga, the perspective on life is
pretty dank for the most part, almost all the characters more concerned about
finding drugs or insulting each other than making the most of their lives. If
the seventies marked the death of the hippie dream - of free love, art and
peace - than Liquid Sky feels like
the prolapsed dirge afterwards into the early eighties. The central character Margaret
is an outsider in her own community; a girl who ran from her home town to New
York, turning herself from the pretty small town lass into the peroxide blonde
figure who hides herself in her exaggerated dress sense. Rather than a camp
tone, Liquid Sky is a suitably
grotty movie where a character tries to find herself under the context of an
alien related story. It's not dissimilar to Alex
Cox'sRepo Man (1984), where the
sci-fi narrative is a layer over a realistic depiction of a young adult trying
to find them self in an urban city environment.

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Like the Morrissey films and various underground movies from the USA, it
breaks rules on the notion of how characters should act in films, where unlike
mainstream films you can find them acting drastically different and with a
greater realism and/or an exaggeration seen as too "raw" for
commercial product. They tackle subjects like drug addiction and sexuality with
an incredible bluntness that you don't find in most films. Then there are ideas
like Liquid Sky casting Margaret and
Jimmy with the same actress, the later with Anne
Carlisle lowering her voice and looking like a New Romantic in a suit and
slicked back hair, the trick of having the two being able to communicate with
each other (and for one to perform oral sex on the other in one scene) pulled
off with considerable success and simple ideas. The fact the director Slava Tsukerman - was a Russian emigrant
who made films in his homeland, before the difficulties with making films in
the Soviet Union forced him to leave, means that he would've had considerable experience
with film production; for this to meld with the type of cinema that usually
suggested improvisation and working with limited resources leads to fascinating
results.

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His willingness to tackle taboos
is also commendable as if he was finally unshackled from the restrictions he
had before, particularly with how the film blurs sexuality and gender
continually. Alongside Carlisle playing
a male and female character, the film co-written by Tsukerman with Carlisle and
Nina V. Kerova has the central
character express displeasure at romance being dictated by gendered anatomy and
various other characters have dialogue the plays with gender. Sexuality itself
is as much a victim of the ennui the film has, scenes of sexual orgasm mostly
depicted in infra-red from the alien's point-of-view before it kills the person
involved, the human face and body distorted by the reds and rainbow colours of
their body temperature before a giant circle swallows the image up.

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Technical Detail:

Liquid Sky is a film held up by a series of character scenes where
anecdotes and events rather than plot points take place, and a distinction this
film has to other similar films of its ilk is how it intercuts up to three
different scenes within the same time frame together. The result isn't
dislocated at all, instead adding a pace that interweaves all the characters
into each others' lives as most of them eventually meet each other.

The most well known aspect of the
film is its score. Partly composed by the director himself with Brenda I. Hutchinson and Clive Smith, it's a crude yet evocative
thing, its limitations in sound as much a part of its virtues. The music is a
huge factor in the film's character. Especially when it gets to its central
theme, its mix of almost guttery pipes and machinery fits the New York locations
and avoids coming off as cheap synth because of the texture of its sound. Also
worth mentioning is a musical number by Adriane with a machine that uses her
heartbeat for percussion, her song about her musical box memorably blunt in the
lyrics.

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Abstract Spectrum: None

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Barring the archness of some of
the dialogue and the main plot thread, Liquid
Sky is far from an unconventional work. The aesthetic of the sets, the
cloths and the neon lights is a considerable part of the movie's personality
but it drastically contrasts to the reality just around it. It's a gritty drama
that feels grim and melancholic at the same time as it can be quirky, using
practical visual effects to add to its charm, to the point that behind the
costumes and music its very subdued.

Personal Opinion:

As long as you go into the film
knowing that it's far from the cartoonish work that its aesthetic suggests it
is, Liquid Sky is a very engaging
cult film.

From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1pth4P1sifI/Us8JqVWdXaI/AAAAAAAAIPw/S3xFKH2LoVc/s1600/liquid-sky+2.jpg

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"I could go on for hours with more examples. The list is endless. You probably never gave it a thought, but all great films, without exception, contain an important element of no reason. And you know why? Because life itself is filled with no reason." - Rubber (2010)

About Me

I am 28 years old and hail from England. For the last few years I have been a growing fan of cinema and have decided to take the next step into blogging about it and any other tangents that about the things I'm interested in I get onto.